


Squaring the Circle

by CherryBlossomMonologues



Series: Monologues Beneath the Cherry Tree [1]
Category: CLAMP - Works, Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Freeform, M/M, written before there was canon to diverge from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 03:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7668421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryBlossomMonologues/pseuds/CherryBlossomMonologues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I know you can feel me here.  The inverted pentagrams that you once engraved upon the backs of my hands called to you when I allowed my fingertips to brush against the rough bark of the cherry tree.  They glow faintly in the shade of the blossoms, spreading a diffuse warmth up my arms and through my body.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I will be gone before you can find me for the circle must never be squared.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squaring the Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 1999/2000.

The wind blows softly, promising answers to well-kept secrets. I close my eyes, allowing the pale pink petals of cherry trees in spring to brush against my face.

Almost, but not quite, a caress.

There are times, only in the stillness of the deepest night, when I can feel your touch. In that comforting darkness, I remember the warmth of your arms around me, a gentle embrace I never quite returned. I can hear your soft breath in my ear, feel it against my cheek. But, when, smiling, overcoming the instinctive fear that has been bred into me for a lifetime, I allow my body to echo the love with which my heart swells, there is nothing but emptiness. The dream abandons me, and I am alone.

I try not to look back. 

That way lies madness. 

Still.

Here, I feel closer to you than anywhere else…even though I am never with you.

All anger that I had once harbored deep within my soul has vanished like the threat to the world. Anger at you, for being what you must be. Anger, and yes, hatred, at myself, for falling for the illusion. No, I do not need you anymore. I do not require dreams of you. I do not seek your shadowed form among the boughs of the trees.

It has ended; the battle is finished, the war is over, and we have separated in the name of peace and balance. 

Ah, yes.

There must always be balance. For as long as I can remember, I have known it. It is both mother and lover, and I can savor its fiery touch when all else is dim and colorless. 

There is power in the space between the light and the dark, enough for an infinity of shaping and wielding over an infinity of lifetimes. She has taken more men to her bed than I shall ever meet; she will cradle more in her arms long after my body has returned to dust.

Yet, such equilibrium is tenuous at best. Without light or dark, there can be no balance. Should one overtake the other, both shall inevitably perish. Likewise, if they merge, they cease to exist. Even the novice practitioner knows this and guards that shimmering wellspring of his Art.

Why, then, did you mark and pursue me? 

To spare me only to hunt me later…surely you knew the danger. We inherited the legacy of our clans, a lineage of coexistence and indifference. Ah, how did Hokuto-chan say it? I am the head, and you are the tail. Sumeragi and Sakurazukamori: two halves of a whole pulling in opposite directions, never allowed to touch, with the interface between us the source of our spiritual might. Should the two halves meet, disaster will surely be the sole result. 

You could simply have killed me under the cherry long ago, when I was a child and powerless. It would have been the surest path, and no one, not even my own clan, could begrudge you such an action. It is in your nature to do so; the Sakurazukamori is obliged to take the life of any who witness his magic.

Besides, one Sumeragi death cannot irrevocably upset the balance.

Death. That is a part of the reason why murder is forbidden to us. I wonder, did you guess? There are two forms of equilibrium. Balance in perpetual life. Balance in eternal death. Ideally, both should hold sway in an inseparable weave spun endlessly, and, out of the chaotic tangle of interwoven threads, a beautiful tapestry appears. Thus, everything dies sooner or later, even the ancient cherry tree that you guard. Yet, life begets life. Though the cherry will someday die, among its countless seed there will be a new sapling to grow over the barrow as its predecessor once did. 

The Sumeragi are the same. One dies; another will grow to take his place. I die; my successor will lead the clan after me. 

The Sakurazukamori are not as we. There is but one Sakurazukamori, and that one person inherits the title through the murder of the previous. Only in this consecration of blood may your clan perpetuate itself. Therefore, we cannot kill lest we upset the balance by murdering YOU.

How naïve of you to think that I would avenge myself of my sister's murder with your death.

Nonetheless, you knew you could destroy us both, even when we first met under the cherry boughs. We were opposites, true, but we were complete. You were the perfect hunter—balanced in death. I was the vessel of purity— balanced in life.

Now...

Perhaps it is true. The darkness does indeed long for the light to fill it. What did you see in that nine-year-old boy underneath the cherry tree? Completion? Yes, that must be it. You had never felt incomplete until you met me. I showed you parts of yourself that you had never known before to be missing. Suddenly, you wanted what I had to give.

It is no less true for me. I desired the night to enfold my guttering candle flame. In youth, I was ashamed to admit it. My mind told me it was wrong to love a man and allow him to love me in return, but my heart never once balked. I may have rejected your advances, but I could never leave you.

We tried to square the circle.

In the mind's eye I can see the Taoist symbolism for Yin and Yang. Two pieces, virtually identical, chasing each other in an infinite circle. In their eternal motion, they are stable, forming the circle of power, a masterpiece of symmetry. Were they to break the cycle, the beautiful symmetry would be broken. The balance would be irrevocably upset with catastrophic consequences that none could foresee. 

So, are we just those pieces of the circle, then? Are we destined to pursue each other in an endless loop solely to guard the balance? It seems so grossly unfair.

Still.

I have no right to complain. It has ended and we both survive. Many cannot claim the same. So many lives have been lost in this battle to end all battles. Too many. They were caught up helplessly between us, and what right did we have to shed their innocent blood? Only the mandate of the Gods. I mourn the deaths of all the people that did not live to see this new world, yet I know that they will return and return…just another circle forever completed. 

We have not been allowed to be reborn anew, you and I…we continue, watching the wheel turn, banned from its dance of symmetry. 

It was more than you had expected and far more than I had hoped.

Not until the very end was the future made clear. Fated to die in each other's embrace. Yes, it was fated, for as long as we refused to deviate from our chosen paths, the circumstances surrounding our future would be inevitable…our choices dictated our fate in 1999. The last caretakers of the balance, dead, together. Yet Kamui changed our future; he showed us the way. The future may be changed if we choose to alter ourselves…if we all abandon our one wish. Sacrificing his own one wish, Kamui brought us what now is. With his death came a second chance for the rest of us.

Let us be as we were, then, two halves of a whole seeking each other but never able to touch. I will reach for you, and you will do the same...but there will be nothing for either of us to grasp. There is healing and restoration in this calm emptiness.

We had lost our ways when we were together, bonded as one. Each became a bit of the other. In merging, we became incomplete, less than the sum of our parts. After all this time, I can sometimes feel you within me, an alien inclination or slip of the tongue, a sudden insight. Inescapable cravings for cigarettes. A few more years and it should disappear. Soon, I will be as I was. You are already exactly as you were.

Is this the best way? 

Do I forget my sister and stop talking to her within the depths of my heart?

Do I deny what I have become and turn my back upon my one love?

There is no choice, really. We never lived for ourselves. We are children of the balance. We give of ourselves so that others may thrive.

And...my sister...she will live again.

Still.

I've never been able to lie to you. The sixteen-year-old boy buried deep within the recesses of my heart cries. You'd be surprised how easy it is for me to steel my heart against his cries of sorrow and betrayal. No, not your betrayal of him, but my own.

I know you can feel me here. The inverted pentagrams that you once engraved upon the backs of my hands called to you when I allowed my fingertips to brush against the rough bark of the cherry tree. They glow faintly in the shade of the blossoms, spreading a diffuse warmth up my arms and through my body.

I will be gone before you can find me for the circle must never be squared.

On the behalf of the river of energy that flows between our need for each other and nurtures the spirits of ten-thousand things...

Farewell. The petals no longer touch me.

Seishiro-san.

Farewell.

 

END


End file.
